“I think of my paintings as found landscapes and as visual journeys. They evolve on the canvas and the focus of the painting gradually comes into view”
in my studio
I make visual journeys in paint to find the landscapes where I feel most at home. They evolve on the canvas, the focus gradually coming into view. I find the landscape I need after a journey into my minds eye, making sense of the marks and colours on the canvas along the way. Each new mark suggesting a new path to travel, sometimes bringing me to a crossroads where I sit and study the subtle shifts of light and colour on the horizon to decide which direction to take. It is a meditative escape and part of my creative process. I begin with a journey and my journey ends when I have found the landscape where I want to be.
Distance from my subject is an important part of my artistic process so most of my work is done in the studio where I feel free to use the landscape as a vehicle to create huge open solitary landscapes all of my own. A painting often bears a resemble to place I am familiar with but it is rare that they are of a particular location.
“I welcome accident and ambiguity in my paintings”
I attempt to create in my paintings a similar experience to an unfamiliar landscape being looked at for the first time, an uncertainty of what lies ahead, the puzzle that we undertake in trying to identify what belongs to the sky, what is the sea, what is the land and at what point they all meet. This active consideration of the paintings illusion to space, keeps it alive and active and being open to reinterpretation.